In response to the 1963 terrorist attack which killed four little girls in Birmingham, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered a powerful, cathartic eulogy. Speaking to a crowd of more than 3,000 mourners - a crowd that was black and white - Dr. King reminded a mourning nation that "God has a way of wringing good out of evil."

He voiced a hope that "They spilled blood of these innocent girls may cause the whole citizenry of Birmingham to transform the negative extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of a bright future. Indeed this tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience."

In the aftermath of the murders in Birmingham, the March on Washington and the assassination of President Kennedy, the country did take transformative steps, ultimately culminating in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But the nine souls lost in Charleston show us that we still have a long journey ahead of us.

Dr. King's response to the murders of innocent congregants in Birmingham can offer similar hope and catharsis to a country in shock to the hate crime perpetrated in Charleston. CBS News created a moving tribute to the victims and community, setting images from Charleston to excerpts from Dr. King's eulogy.

I hope Charleston can find some comfort in these words:

I hope you can find some consolation from Christianity's affirmation that death is not the end. Death is not a period that ends the great sentence of life, but a comma that punctuates it to more lofty significance. Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but an open door which leads man into life eternal. Let this daring faith, this great invincible surmise, be your sustaining power during these trying days.

They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.